Return of the Crazy Bird The Sad, Strange Tale of the Dodo

Octavo; hardcover, quarter-bound in papered boards with gilt spine-titles; 216pp., with maps and many monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; some spotting to the text block top edge. Dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. Postage quoted is for a standard format octavo book. Final charges may vary depending on size and weight. The dodo went from being newly discovered to extinction in little more than a century. This flightless, odd-looking bird was seen for the first time by Europeans and then annihilated by Europeans all between the early sixteenth and the second half of the seventeenth century. By the nineteenth century all that remained of the 'crazy bird' was a patchwork of tall tales, contradictory reports, incompatible illustrations and a single dodo's skull and foot. The dodo had become, in short an unsolvable puzzle that persisted in art, literature and scientific speculation. This book considers this bumbling and ungainly creature in our collective scientific and literary imaginations from its island paradise of Mauritius to its ill-fated and unseemly extinction.…